3 Poems by Isabelle Davis
Isabelle Davis
backwoods dark
on tuesday the Dog barked at the trap door & she did not stop for three hours & the guy who lives underneath us texted me to say that he knew that this building shouldn’t allow dogs and i did not text back because he is obnoxious. then i opened the trap door and Climbed in with my flashlight.
it was backwoods dark in there.
my flashlight did not carry the distance i thought it should. my dog stopped barking and walked in front of me. we walked straight ahead for two hours until my Light caught a corner of a box & then it caught a pillow & then more pillows & every inch of space that my light covered it Stayed in.
it had no where to travel to.
inside the box were Letters. they all said “it’s hard for me to apologize but i would Become a Map for you.”
my dog and i laid down. my dog and i forgave. my dog and i slept.
tell them other motherfuckers be quiet
do you like my socks? they’re from when i played
softball & thought i was straight but you can
have them if you want them baby
you can have whatever you like. you can have my
lips too i will leave them on your shoulder
where they won’t tickle you but they might
make you moan at inappropriate times.
that’s what i would want. don’t worry about
overwatering the cactus i gave you it’s kinda like me
a little needy & it thrives on attention.
i can’t be overheld.
they have never felt this way
we lit candles in our treehouse & when the wind lifted it & us out
of our tree it did not whip us around in the way i expected.
the candles floated as if they were in zero gravity but i’m not sure
if a flame would catch in zero gravity so maybe it wasn’t like
anything other than what it was.
we fucked in the treehouse & i’m not sure if that put us in the
mile high club because the tornado did not announce the altitude
as we reached it.
that’s not a metaphor for anything though we flew in the sky like
paper & the tornado let us down fourty-five minutes later all in
one piece & shaking from each other & featherless chickens
pecked the ground around us.
isabelle davis is an associate editor with big lucks books, an editor for probably crying review, and a pushcart nominated, chicago based writer. her first chapbook is called I’M SORRY BECAUSE THIS IS NOT ABOUT SEX. work can be found in alice blue review, quaint, the NewerYork, punctuate, and others. find her on twitter @verytinygalaxy.